Aspiring lawyers used to be told that the practice of law was no way to
become rich. Lawyers have generally vied with doctors for the honour of
having the best paid occupation, but, though many lawyers have made a
very good living, lawyers who grew rich did so from business interests
outside the practice of law itself.

Yet in 1952, the first year of his partnership with Fraser Elliott,
Heward Stikeman, not yet 40, made about one million dollars from their
practice. Later Stikeman and Elliott became very rich indeed from
business interests outside the practice of law, particularly from CAE,
which dominates the market for aircraft simulators for pilot training.
But the interest of Stikeman Elliott
is in the first few chapters, which describe how Stikeman and Elliott
managed to build their extraordinarily lucrative practice.

Stikeman, born in in Montreal in 1913, worked as a lawyer for the
Department of National Revenue from 1939 to 1946. From 1943 he was
Assistant Deputy Minister of National Revenue. The Commissioner of
Income Tax, from 1943 Deputy Minister of National Revenue, was Colin
Fraser Elliott, the father of Roy Fraser Elliott, Stikeman's future
partner. In the small society of Ottawa Stikeman became a friend of the
father and the son.

Roy Fraser Elliott, born in Ottawa in 1921, graduated from Queen's in
1943 and Osgoode Hall Law School in 1946. After a year at Harvard he
joined, at Stikeman's bidding, the firm Stikeman had gone to on
returning to Montreal in 1946 after his war service at the Department
of National Revenue.

War-time demands and post-war hopes had greatly increased the level and
complexity of taxation. Stikeman had gained unparalleled knowledge of
the legislation, some of which he helped to draft, and of its
administration. Stikeman Elliott started out as a tax law boutique with
only four lawyers. Good advice or successful representation could save
clients lots of money and Stikeman and Elliott were paid accordingly.
There were few other tax lawyers and none who could claim the knowledge
and connections of Stikeman and Elliott.

Left wing critics would see in this something crooked: high priced
talent helping corporations avoid paying their fair share. In fact the
opposite is true. Overreaching governments risked stifling the economy
with high taxes and were forced to try to mitigate the economic damages
through complicated legislation. These produced their own
economic distortions and a lucrative but finally unproductive service
industry of tax advice. Getting in on the beginning of this industry
allowed Stikeman and Elliott to become rich through the practice of law.

Stikeman Elliott's advantage in tax law could not last forever and the
firm gradually expanded into general business law and has now become a
big full service firm much like all the others, whatever Stikeman Elliott
may say about its special values. But as late as the early seventies
Stikeman and Elliott were the only partners, doling out salaries and
bonuses to their hard working and talented associates as they saw fit.

In the 1950's the old law schools did not produce lawyers fast enough
to keep pace with the growth of the country, its economy and the
complications of the law. There was work to be had for the asking and
Stikeman and Elliott were never shy about asking. Even today the market
for legal services is not so efficient that getting work does not count
as much as doing it well, to say nothing of pricing it competitively.
But the corporations that sustain the big firms are not so tied to old
connections and will shop around. Careers such as Stikeman and Elliott
enjoyed are now impossible.

Richard Pound is known to Canadians as a member of the International
Olympic Committee. Like a good sport he has compiled the book his firm
wanted though no one will want to read it through. It is surely no a
coincidence that it is published by McGill-Queen's University Press and
Pound is Chancellor of McGill. They have published duller and less
worthy books. Hundreds of people who have worked at the firm are kindly
mentioned. Big deals and big cases are briefly recognised. The opening
of new offices in Toronto, Ottawa, London and beyond is chronicled.
Those who left the firm early, unless like John Turner and Donald
Johnston they went on to distinguished careers in politics, are
sometimes curtly dismissed. There is nothing on the firms finances
after 1970.

Tom Berger has not grown rich from the practice of law. Its attraction
for him has been influence rather than money. Berger is best known to
Canadians for the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry and for resigning
from the British Columbia Supreme Court in 1983 after public statements
he made urging the inclusion of native rights in the constitution lead
to an investigation by the Canadian Judicial Council. British
Columbians may remember him as the leader of the provincial NDP for a
brief period before he lost his seat and retired from electoral
politics in 1969.

One Man's Justice
is a memoir of Berger's favorite cases. Only incidentally does it
recount his life beyond the cases. Berger had a commendable distaste
for the phony side of politics:

...the proclamation of slogans....the constant meetings, speeches, the
time spent in "working the room," meeting people you'd never met before
and ("Nice to see you again") and would never meet again."

But he was as keen as any politician to make his mark on the life of
the country; he simply wanted to do it in the courts rather than in a
legislature. He would not have to persuade the people to support him,
just a few judges.

Berger says nothing about his work as a judge. He is a strict believer
in the rule that judges have their say in their reasons from the bench
and should say no more than that. He breaches no client confidentiality
describing his cases off the bench. But he whines that others did it
and got away with it in defending himself against the allegation that
by urging the inclusion of native rights in the constitution he had
breached the rule that judges should not speak out on political issues.
It is a longstanding and sound rule made only more important by the
increased political importance of the courts since the Charter.
The Canadian Judicial Council did not recommend his removal from the
bench. But Berger was fed up with the controversy. He had always been
uncertain about wanting to be a judge, and finally he saw his hopes of
sitting on the Court of Appeal or Supreme Court of Canada—where he
fancied he could make law rather than just decide individual
cases—fading. He flatters himself that his intervention helped get
native rights in the constitution.

Berger likes to believe that in the cases he recounts he was "engaged
in the pursuit of justice". Such a belief may give an advocate the
confidence and energy to carry through a case to a successful
conclusion. But it can also blind an advocate to the messiness of life,
which the law exists to sort out. Berger's accounts of his cases are
recapitulations of his advocacy. His clients were always right and if
they did not win they should have. The only criminals Berger knew in an
extensive criminal practice were pitiful or innocuous fellow who simply
had their own subculture. Though he goes on too long about some of his
cases one never feels one gets the full story.

On native rights Berger is a true believer. Fellow true believers will
be grateful for his advocacy. Those unsure what to make of it all will
learn nothing from him.

Scott Turow has grown rich from writing mystery novels about the law. The money he has made from novels like Presumed Innocent,
turned into a successful movie starring Harrison Ford, has allowed him
to do pro bono work that has extended his experience of criminal law
and provided raw material for further novels. He has acted for
prisoners on death row and prosecuted corrupt judges, both themes in
his latest novel.

In Reversible Errors
Rommy Gandolph, a dim witted petty criminal, is, in 2001, awaiting
execution for a triple murder that took place on July 4, 1991. Arthur
Raven, a former prosecutor now settled into a comfortable civil
litigation practice, is conscripted by the Federal Court of Appeals to
make one last attempt to save Gandolph. Rommy gave a full and
videotaped confession. It looks like a simple open and shut case. But
not for long. The pace and complication of the story, which never
loses plausibility, is impressive. The original investigating
policeman, prosecutor and judge become involved. Divergent perspectives
and interests are developed. One grows impatient for the next twist as
Turow recounts the dreary amours of his principal characters at
unnecessary length. The dialogue can be disconcerting. Turow seems to
be trying to update the hard boiled idioms of film noir. Either that or
cops and criminals and lawyers in Chicago, where Turow practices,
learned to talk at the movies.

Reversible Errors is not a novel about capital punishment. Turow set out his reasoned pragmatic opposition to capital punishment in a New Yorker article in January. In Reversible Errors
it is simply a background fact. For the crime novelist the end of
capital punishment would be a loss, draining some of the life and death
drama from the genre.

The practice of law is not about winning or losing or changing the law
without bothering with politics. It is the hard and generally well paid
work of resolving people's conflicts according to settled rules so that
they will not fight in the streets. Drama, wealth and power are
occasional by-products of the resulting exposure to all aspects of
human life.